Page:Macaula yʼs minutes on education in India, written in the years 1835, 1836 and 1837 (IA dli.csl.7615).pdf/102

 any particular bias in favour of Brahminical learning. We are therefore perfectly at liberty to deal with that part of the establishment in the manner which may appear to us most useful.

The second proposition (to buy Perron’s house) has already been adopted by the Committee.

I have great doubts about the third proposition, (to establish branch schools in the villages). The advantages of adopting it on a small scale are not very obvious: and we have not money sufficient to defray the expense of adopting it on the large scale recommended by Mr. Walters.

The fourth proposition (to establish stipends) has been repeatedly under our consideration. My opinion about it remains unchanged. I altogether dissent from Mr Walters’s proposition about religious books, I would not of course keep from the pupils a book which, on other grounds, they ought to read, merely because it contained information respecting the Christian religion. I would not keep Paradise Lost or, or Robinson CrosoeCrusoe [sic]’s Dialogues with his man Friday out of their hands. But I would not in any school give them books with the object of making converts of the students, and least of all would I do so in a school founded by a zealous Mahomedan, who assuredly would have taken good care to prevent any such use of his money being made, if he could have foreseen it.

As to the last suggestion of Mr. Walters, (to invite tenders for the supply of school books) if it ought to be adopted with respect to the Hooghly College, it ought also to be adopted with respect to all our institutions. Perhaps the whole question had better be referred to the Sub-Committee of school-books or the Sub-Committeo of Finance. The latter Sub-Committee, I think, is that to which it seems naturally to belong.—[Page 86.] 10th January, 1837.

What knowledge of the Vernacular is “absolutely requisite”—Mr. Sutherland seems to me to have a little misunderstood Dr. Wise. The Doctor does not say that a mere colloquial smattering of Bengali is all that is required. He says it is all that isabsolutely requisite: and goes on to add that instruction is given, composition practised, and prizes held out in order to induce the higher classes to acquire a critical knowledge of the Vernacular tongue. By “absolutely requisite” he seems evidently to mean requisite for purposes of common life, for the purpose of giving orders to the servants, of inquiring the way, of buying and selling in the bazaar, and so forth.

As to the library, I think that we may expect to receive the books which we ordered from England in the course of a very few months.